


waiting for the thaw

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Explicit Consent, F/M, Ice, Rough Sex, Temperature Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 20:21:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Fine. If this is how we're doing this, do this to me. Do it." </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	waiting for the thaw

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this kinkmeme prompt: http://parksandreckink.livejournal.com/2128.html?thread=1039440#t1039440
> 
> Note: there is no non-con here, but it's still a presence in the story and I didn't want to tick "No archive warnings apply"; if you want me to provide you with more detail before reading, please feel free to contact me.

They're fighting about, of all things, candy for dinner. "I can't believe you think Chris and Ann should leave Pawnee because Chris got a gumball in his salad," Leslie's saying, and Ben rolls his eyes in a way Leslie actually thinks he picked up from April. Unless this is just a glimpse she's getting into teenage Ben, who probably was kind of like April, in that he was cynical and awful and a jerk, urgh. Actually, April is beautiful and Leslie loves her, and Ben is just making her think mean things, like some sort of cynical-awful-jerk spiral of negativity. Urgh. 

"I never said that," Ben's saying, as they walk in the door, "I never said anything remotely like that. All I was saying is, maybe getting a gumball in your salad when you're Chris is kind of a wake-up call that you might not be living in a place ideally suited to you. Also, I can't believe I'm saying this, but do you actually not think it's a little _weird_? A gumball. In a salad. I mean, are you hearing that? A gumball in a salad!"

"It's a perfectly respectable Pawnee culinary tradition," Leslie says, and she knows she sounds a little defensive, and she can't help that, she can't help suddenly being aware that Ben came here and stayed here and married her and in so doing probably married a small but important part of the state of Indiana, but part of him is elsewhere, is part of that elsewhere - maybe way up north, and frosted, because it's stupidly cold in Minnesota - and now Chris and Ann will be, too. Maybe that's it.

"Fine," Ben says, throwing his keys down with real annoyance. "Whatever."

Or maybe she's tired and pissed and she had three large glasses of red wine with dinner and she just wants this night to be over. Ben is rummaging in the freezer and it's already pretty late and probably they should stop drinking, but then she looks at him and he's holding a vodka bottle with his fingers dead-white against the neck and both of their best friends in the world are _leaving_ and maybe this means he actually cares. She watches him pour a shot of it into a small glass and holds it up to the kitchen bulb so it scatters light across his face, strange and fey, and his jacket is half-off and his tie is pulled loose and he was running his hands through his hair in frustration, earlier, so now he just looks kind of soft-edged, dishevelled. She'd think it was cute, but he knocks back the shot and sets the glass down on the table, hard, and there's something of that hardness in his eyes, too - something sharp and glittering, like the mess of a fist through a window. Leslie's still wearing her favourite heels, and they make a sound like gunshots as she crosses the floor, takes Ben's hand and pulls him to standing. 

"Leslie," he says, taken at a loss for a second, and she keeps right on going, pulls him with her across the floor and then they have to stay in place for a second, this is the important second when it doesn't matter that Leslie is really pissed at him right now, or she loves him, while she looks at him questioningly and he says, "Yes" – so she carries on dragging him along, pushes him hard onto on the couch so for a moment his feet leave the floor and he's staring back up at her with his arms thrown back behind his head. The sound of his body hitting that hard surface is organic and strange. He looks up at her and… well, that's not a smile. But it's something approaching it. 

And, whoa, she just threw him down on the couch like he was a ragdoll, and there's a part of her mind left over from before the wine and the anger and everything else that's roaring through her ears right now, asking her in a pointed tone what exactly he thought he was consenting to a second ago, so she gets on her knees for a second, pulls at that stupid loosened tie and brings him close enough for her to feel his breath on her cheek. "You want this?"

"Yes," he says, half-choked.

"Yeah?" Leslie puts her other arm around him, between the couch and the back of his neck, pushing his head slightly forwards. "You really want this?" 

Into her ear, he whispers, "Yes" – and it's still with that slight catch in his breathing so she has to take another moment just to look at him half-wrecked with his eyes part-closed and his lips slightly parted, and then she discards the heels – they make satisfying thumps, thrown over the back of the couch – and clambers on top of him, getting the stupid tie over his head and pushing the jacket the rest of the way over his shoulders. He was barefoot already, stretched out on the couch underneath her, so she plants her ass on his legs, and urgh, he's always bones and angles and it kind of hurts, but at least she's got somewhere from which to start unbuttoning his shirt. He's still looking fogged, as though his mind is, not elsewhere, but right here, incapable of anything but sharing precisely the same space as his body, so it's a surprise when she reaches for his belt buckle and finds her hand pushed away. 

"Ben," she says, and she's sounding, for the first time, a little unsure; Ben looks directly at her, alert, and gives her another strange, not-quite smile. 

"Not yet," he says, quiet and determined. He lets go of her hand and looks up, starts returning the favour, undoing the buttons on her blouse with a solid focus in his expression that makes her shiver. It's the same look that was on his face when he set the glass down on the counter – full of promise, and sharp edges. When he's done he pushes the sleeves over her shoulders the same way she did to him, and cups her breasts with his hands that he was using to rummage in the freezer, crap. 

"Ben," she says, and then somehow she doesn't tell him to stop. Suddenly she's thinking about the cold, about how this is the last winter she's spending in the same town as her best friend, about Ben looking across the room at her with that vivid disdain. She shivers again with cold and with anger, a real shudder passing palpably through her body. When he starts to pull away, she grabs his hands, digs her fingers into his wrists hard enough to mark, holds him in place. "This is how we're doing it," she says, all venom right into his ear, and he nods and then she feels his body tense, like he's just come to a decision. 

"Okay," he says, gets his hands away, wriggles out from under her and sits on the couch hugging his knees, and he might look completely ridiculous right now, with his shirt half undone and his shoes and socks and tie marking out a weird trail of evidence on the floor, but he looks right at her, clear-eyed and defiant and there's nothing funny about it. "Fine. If this is how we're doing this, do this to me. Do it." 

Leslie looks at the red marks her fingers left in his skin, and, okay, so Ben probably had as much wine as she did, plus that single shot, and they've both had pretty shitty days, and if she were thinking clearly right now, she'd probably say they should give it up, go to bed, talk in the morning post-toothpaste and sobriety, but Leslie isn't thinking clearly right now and he's sitting on that couch _asking_ her to wipe that stupid almost-smirk off his face. She reaches out and yanks his collar, pulling him towards her, and there's a moment when she's confused at how difficult that is; then she realises he's dead weight, because he's being an asshole – so she just pulls harder, kisses him roughly and deeply (and he responds to that; he kisses her back, his hands coming up to work through her hair, so she calls that a small victory) and while he's distracted, goes for his belt buckle again, undoes the clasp swiftly and efficiently, pulls down his zipper and reaches in to squeeze his cock. He's still hard – and Leslie thought he would be, because they've done this, they do this – but this time is different, somehow. He looks at her, still with the smirk, but also kind of distant, as though he's not the person this is happening to. 

She's not gentle. His head tips backs slightly and Leslie kisses him again, a dirty filthy kiss, her tongue pushing into his mouth so she can taste the vodka like some remote burn of ice. Her fingers tighten around his cock and he gasps, and right, so it's a little dry, and maybe, if they were doing this in their bed in the cool light of morning she'd suggest lube, or just taking it slow, but he breathes out raggedly and she keeps on going.

"Leslie," he gets out, her name forced through gritted teeth, and she bites her lip.

"Am I hurting you?" she asks, dispassionately; he might be nodding, or it might just be the movement of his head. "Well?"

"Yes," he says, again through lips pressed together and Leslie whistles through her teeth, gives his cock another tug for good measure – he groans, again halfway between pain and something else – and she kind of sighs, and carefully and meticulously finishes undoing his pants. 

"Up," she orders, and Ben lifts up on his hands so she can shuck his pants over his hips. She places a hand in the curve of his back so he has to stay like that, body arched, while she carefully pulls his underwear off as well, and she wishes she could see the look on his face when she lets him drop down and then puts her lips around his cock in the same moment. She thinks, at least, that he'll say something, but he doesn't make a sound as her tongue works slowly over the tip, then she licks in longer strokes down the shaft of it. She can make out the taste of salt and just, the smell of him – the sweet, familiar smell of someone who wears her T-shirts and takes weekend naps on her side of the bed – and she's aware of the soft rise and fall of his body beneath her, and she's done this, like, a million times and that's part of the joy of it by now, that she knows the sequence of small sounds that he makes when she does, control unravelling into desperation, but right now she can't hear his breathing. She breaks off and says, "Ben" – expecting he'll say, _don't stop_ , or at least answer her, which would be polite, but his eyes on her are calm and hard and infuriating.

Suddenly, Leslie's had enough – enough of stupid, jerk Ben, who is neither stupid nor a jerk but neither of those things at a great, cold distance – so she moves up the couch, thinking weird thoughts about the permanent dents they're probably leaving in the cushions, and kisses him again without any gentleness, just so he can taste himself in her mouth, and reaches down to his cock again and twists, as hard as she can. Her hand's still dry and his eyes widen with pain. He says, cut-off, "Leslie" – and then she gets off him, finds his pants on the floor, fishes out his wallet and the condom in the back of it. He glances at her, still emotionless, while she waves the packet in front of his face. "Do you want-"

"Yes," he murmurs, eyes closing, and there's the faintest tremor in his voice. Leslie grins to herself. 

"Okay, let's get this show on the road," she says, chirpily, in just the same tone she uses when it's five o'clock in the morning and she's ready to get up and he would sleep for another five hours if she let him, and she takes off her pants and slips down her panties all while his eyes are still closed, so they snap wide open a second later when she straddles him, one hand on his cock and the other gripping his hip. "Sure you want this?" she asks, still chirpily, paused on the edge of a moment: she's firmly balanced on her toes, so she can feel the tip of his cock, almost but not quite inside, edging against her clit. She holds still and rock-steady so it's only the small, involuntary movements of his body that either of them can feel, the rhythm of his breathing, the push of blood through his veins.

"Please, Leslie," he says, with real need, his hips coming up to meet her, and she pushes his hair out of his eyes and kisses his lips very gently and says:

"Say that again."

"Please. _Please_."

"Okay," she says, quiet, and slowly, carefully, sinks downwards. It feels good, good and real and familiar, because they do this all the time and this is how it goes, not in a boring way but like a two-part harmony they've gotten really great at. Ben makes a small, coming-undone noise, like he's starting to lose track of himself, finally, and his right hand moves down, coming to rest just where their bodies meet, fingers working towards her clit – because that's how it goes, Leslie thinks again; because he knows what she likes and something other than his conscious mind is working behind his eyes now – and that feels good, too, but she slaps him away. "No."

"No?" Ben looks up at her.

"I really, really hate you right now" - and then she braces herself against the cushions, grabs his ass, pushes him into her and then his breath hitches, his expression going kind of slack and sweet, like it always does, and she feels the shudder pass through his body.

He looks up a minute later – "Leslie, you didn't let me-" – but she waves him silent. She's Leslie Knope, she can get herself off without his stupid help. And then a little while after that, they disentangle and he gets up properly, padding naked and barefoot across the kitchen floor to get some tissues and clean up a little. It's starting to get cold. When he flumps back down on the couch Leslie unfolds the throw blanket from the top of it and spreads it out over both of them. 

"Leslie," Ben says, low and uneven, and she loves that, that he's still kind of shaky, with none of his habitual sharpness, "you are probably much nicer to me than I deserve."

Leslie thinks about that, snuggling in next to him. "You're mean," she says after a while. She doesn't think, and has never thought, that Ben has any cruelty in him, but she remembers bouncing eighteen budget proposals a day against the hard surface of his ruthlessness. "But I did kind of pick you up and throw you onto a couch."

Ben tips his head. "I could have safeworded out of that."

And that's the thing – they've done that, and Ben has done that, and Leslie likes that that's a thing you can do; that sex and emotions are messy, sometimes, but you can draw a line in the sand, _this stops here_ – but she's still pretty sure this isn't the same thing. "I was," she confesses after a moment, "angry enough to hurt you." 

Ben smiles a little. "But you didn't. Well. Not non-consensually."

"No," Leslie says, and God, what kind of a world would it be if people could do that. "Of course not."

"You know," Ben says, still blurrily, "I spent twelve years wandering around small towns in Indiana with Chris. For twelve years, he was the only person I saw every day who didn't want to kill me and abandon my body in a dumpster."

"That is because," Leslie tells him, "you are a mean, terrible, cynical, awful person" – and takes his hand and squeezes it tight. 

He breathes out. "I'm just… you know. Just trying to tell you."

"Yeah," Leslie says, very softly. "I know, honey, I know" – and there's not a lot more to say about it. Ben looks like he'll drift off to sleep where he is, so she shakes him gently, tells him they should probably move to bed if they don't want to feel terrible in the morning, and he seems to just be on the right side of understanding that. He gets up with the blanket thrown around his shoulders and waits for her for a minute; Leslie puts their clothes in a pile on a chair and puts the vodka bottle back in the freezer. Leading him to bed, she puts her hand on the back of Ben's neck, just for a moment: just to see his eyes go wide and bright.


End file.
